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The Justice Collection gives you a way to speak your truth, with the bold statement of a Chinese Character representing the word Justice. Speak your truth in a variety of ways, with coffee/tea mugs, tshirts, dresses, tops, shower curtains, duvet covers, and more. I invite you to find all these items in my new Shopify store:

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Hi everyone!

First, I want to let you know that I am getting ready to feature more awesome, creative fine artist painters in the very near future, but I have been recently sick. I think I’m finally getting better because today I had the strength to plant some herbs and flowers. A very God sign (I meant to type good, but God works just as well) , I think!

In the meanwhile, I wanted to share my new line of mix and match “Circus Buddies” items to delight your Inner Child! I am opening up a Shopify outlet on my Facebook page Kirsteinfineart in 5 days, but you can get your items at a discount early click here.

Browse the collection, and let me know if you have a favorite! If you choose to click the above link, it will take you directly to my manufacturing outlet Fineartamerica. Here is how it works. Click on an image you prefer in all Circus Buddies images. Then look to the right for a menu of all the various items. You will see many choices: pillows, duvet covers, shower curtains, prints, posters, cards, totes, beach towels, etc.

Have fun “shopping” with my Circus Buddies!

I hope to be back in gear in a few more days, so can get out some more artist features! Meanwhile, enjoy your summer!

Jan Kirstein

Click on these thumbnails to enlarge.

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I am presenting the opening of my Etsy store today with prints, totes and pillows with my designs inspired by my meditations on the seven chakras found in the human body. Also, I am presenting thoughts on art and meditation as well, so please enjoy a tour!

Design I created after meditating on my Rook chakra

Click on thumbnails to enlarge design I created after meditating on my root chakra

Art Is Meditation
Inspired Life
Why making art is the new meditation

By Maia Gambis August 25
Many of us have heard about the benefits of meditation, but sometimes find it hard to do. Fewer of us know about the profound benefits of artistic expression. Creating art, however, is another way to access a meditative state of mind and the profound healing it brings.
“Art is a guarantee to sanity,” said Louise Bourgeois, a French-American artist who died in 2010 at the age of 98. She even went on to add, “…This is the most important thing I have said.” For Bourgeois, art — making art — was a tool for coping with overwhelming emotion. She says she remembers making small sculptures out of bread crumbs at the dinner table when she was a little girl – as a way of dealing with her dominating father. Art was more than an escape – it kept her sane.
Art therapy has a healing effect for a variety of ailments, including depression, trauma and illness. and is effective across age, gender or ethnicity. In a recent study of cancer patients, an art therapy intervention — in conjunction with conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation — not only diminished symptoms typically associated with cancer such as pain, fatigue and anxiety, but also enhanced life expectancy. The study, its authors said, was based on the belief that “the creative process involved in the making of art is healing and life-enhancing. It is used to help patients, or their families, increase awareness of self, cope with symptoms, and adapt to stressful and traumatic experiences.”
[Five ways to thrive in an uncertain world]
Art is not only healing for individuals suffering from severe illness. Here are four reasons why creative activity is such a potent recipe for psychological well-being:

Art is a vehicle for meditation and self-connection
Most of us can understand that art provides an escape to a sometimes harsh reality, but where does art’s healing potential come from? It impacts the state of our minds: Enjoying emotional stability is largely about taking responsibility for how we feel.
Research has shown the power of meditation and the science behind it. One of the reasons it is so powerful is that it fosters acceptance. Creating art is a type of meditation, an active training of the mind that increase awareness and emphasizes acceptance of feelings and thoughts without judgment and relaxation of body and mind.

Click on thumbnails to enlarge design I created after meditating on my Solar Plexus chakra.

Art, like meditation, allows us to create space between our often negative, anxious thoughts and connect with our true selves – as opposed to with the fleeting or false sense of identity we sometimes have when we are caught up in our thoughts and emotions. Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher, writes: “Identification with thoughts and the emotions that go with those thoughts creates a false mind-made sense of self, conditioned by the past… This false self is never happy or fulfilled for long. Its normal state is one of unease, fear, insufficiency, and non-fulfillment.” Creating art is about reaching a state of consciousness and breaking free from the constant debilitating chatter of the mind.

Sacral chakra meditation

Art provides a feeling of flow and freedom
Similarly to meditation, art can help us tap into a deeper and more quiet part of ourselves. We enter into a state of flow and present-moment awareness. “All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness,” Tolle writes. Artists experience that creative activity has the potential to tap into a space of true consciousness of being, void of interpretation. In this space, there can be a sense of having no physical parameters; no body, or form to separate one from the other.

Art allows for true self-expression
The process of making art overrides the need for verbal communication. Creativity is its own language and enables humans to connect with one another — and themselves — on a non-verbal level. In therapy it can be an effective way of saying the unspeakable as is shown through the use of creative therapies with children. This also explains how we can be moved to the core when looking at a work of art, or even listening to music, without necessarily knowing the specifics about its origin. Art exists within its own non-verbal parameter and thus frees us up for unadulterated self-expression.
[Do these exercises for two minutes a day and you’ll immediately feel happier]

Meditation on Heart chakra

Art helps us become steady and centered
As a plus, it is interesting to note that Bourgeois, when asked to comment on her extensive body of work spanning her entire lifetime, says what impresses her most “is how constant [I] have been.” Perhaps we need to redefine what we consider to be a storybook happy ending. Happiness may be less a matter of experiencing sharp highs (often followed by deep lows), and more a matter of nurturing a space that provides stability and a constant connection to our true selves.

This article is republished from our content partner Fulfillment Daily: Daily Science-Backed News for a Happier Life, founded by Stanford University psychologist Emma Seppala, who is also Associate Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford’s School of Medicine.

Throat chakra meditation

Comments from Jan Kirstein

The manifestation of creative abundance, for me involves the practice of Reiki, daily meditation, Tapping, self hypnosis and positive affirmations. I think something is coming together with all this activity and I invite you to share what you do to enhance your creativity.

The musician Rachmoninoff used self hypnosis at a certain point in his career. Up until that point, his music was not well received by the public. After he began the discipline of self hypnosis, his music became an overnight sensation. Tapping the subconscious mind… Most probably the best way to actualize your creative potential.

I had been wanting a unique name for my artwork but struggled to find one .My dad was the reason I am called “Mystic Sparrow .” He was a great supporter of my artwork. When he was in hospital he like to tell all the nurses about my work and tried to sell my prints to them.Sadly he passed on to another planet as he would call it and on the day of his funeral a sparrow flew in and sat on the shoulder of a pallbearer till the end of the service then he flew away.I was told the sparrow was a messenger .Since then the sparrow has been a big part of our lives.So that little mystery sparrow that appeared that day was the creation of my name Mystic Sparrow 🙂

Click on thumbnails to enlarge.

Every now and then you encounter an artist’s work that seems so amazing that you can’t believe it was made by human hands. The color, detail and texture found in all Mystic Sparrow creations presents a seamless presentation of a complete vision from another world entirely. Not only are the figures presented in immaculate detail, but their coexisting environments feature a fantastic world of infinite wonder and enchantment.

Any disdain you may have felt for “fantasy art” is immediately dissolved by the sheer power of her miraculous works, each a masterpiece of perfection. Like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” her figures exist as a perfection perfectly matched by its own accompanying universe. I only hope each piece did not take Mystic Sparrow 16 years, like the “Mona Lisa” took Leonardo da Vinci! Jan Kirstein

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